As an ecologist and biodiversity researcher and recorder, the author visits a wide range of rural and urban habitats mainly close to his home in Sedlescombe near Hastings, East Sussex, UK. The weblog covers the full spectrum of wildlife, from mammals to microbes. As well as details of encounters with England’s flora and fauna, information on where to see species of interest is often given.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

At Christmas in 2017 I came across this photograph which I had
taken nearly ten years previously on 4 April 2008. I had forgotten that I was ever there and
would not have remembered where it was had I not been able to find details of
my visit buried in my computer. At first,
I had no idea about when or why I had taken the picture, but I gathered
fragmented recollections after a while.

The picture was taken looking east from an abandoned depot
or lorry park called Rosebank beside the A22 just north of Polegate in East
Sussex. The fields run down to the
Glynleigh Levels, a western branch of the larger Pevensey Levels, and the distant
horizon is where the village of Hankham lies on a spur of higher land projecting
northwards into the levels. In the past it was spelt 'Handcombe' and was part of a 'Limb of the Cinque Port Liberty of Hastings'. In the
mid-distance the dark, straight hedge marks the line of the Cuckoo Trail, a
cycle and pedestrian path along an abandoned track of the London-Brighton South Coast Railway.

This is a Low Weald landscape with little to excite the
imagination: fields and trees (with a tree house), a Shetland pony, various
fences and, on the left, a water-filled clay pit dug when the long-closed
brickworks nearby was active. Perhaps the
significance of the scene is that it would not win any prizes, would not
embellish the wall of a gallery or the page of a magazine. Its
somewhat nondescript virtues do, perhaps, have a Low Weald feel.

It is also represents only a fragment of time. The camera shutter was open for maybe 100th of a second and that exact scene will never return. It might be possible to go back to the site and frame a similar picture, but it would not be the same. The pony would have gone, the tree house might not be there and the trees and fences would have changed. And who knows what alteration might come over centuries and millennia?

The picture reminds me too of the huge volume of data that lies
locked up in our brains because there is no reason or no one to open the
door. I have posted the picture in ‘the
Cloud’, so others may look at it for one reason or another, but they will not
have the memories I had of the afternoon I spent alone in that forgotten depot,
recording the flora and fauna and its ecological significance for a proposed
development. As Virgil said sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt (there are tears in things and life’s transience
moves the mind).

Friday, December 22, 2017

Now that mild weather has returned to East Sussex, a few bumblebees are on the wing again in the garden. This is, as far as I can tell, a queen buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) photographed this morning. The single-flowered pink camellia is Camellia x williamsii 'J. C. Williams' which usually starts flowering here in December and is very popular with bees at a time when many of the mahonias are going over.

It must have been thought of by others, but I wonder if these light-sleeping queens that find nectar and pollen sources when they wake up in mild spells in winter are getting an evolutionary advantage. In the past, when there were few, or no sources of nectar in the countryside, light sleepers would have been at a disadvantage, but now camellias, mahonias and other winter-flowering exotics are common in gardens, the light-sleepers may be getting a survival advantage over those who do not wake up until primrose time. Perhaps a more attractive idea than that it is all due to global warming.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Despite the mild and rather drab days we are having, I find much to ponder in my short walks round the neighbourhood. I was entranced by two trees, a birch and a field maple, the latter still holding its leaves..

It led me to Robert Frost's poem about birches in which, among much else, he says:

I’d like to go
by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black
branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven,
till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its
top and set me down again.

I also liked the phrase by poet Marchant Barron where he describes the golden-yellow leaves of the field maple "as if touched by Midas in the season of alchemy."In Killingan Wood, which seems very brown and quiet at this time of year I noticed some almost military lines of slime-mould fruiting bodies on a log.

Later in Churchland Wood I found an extraordinary sky blue 'lichen' (below). I wondered if something had happened to a normally grey or green species to cause this and will try to find out more. On 23 December my friend Howard Matcham suggested it might be cobalt crust fungus, Terana caerulea this seems a possibility, but it has also been suggested that it could blue paint that somehow was splashed on this branchlet. I do not think it is paint as there is only a small quantity here and searching as I do almost every day I would have been likely to see anything marked with such bright blue elsewhere.

Monday, December 18, 2017

In Churchland Wood (TQ782189) I found a circular patch of green liverwort two metres up on the smooth trunk of a sweet chestnut. After an exchange of emails with my old friend Howard Matcham it was identified as dilated scalewort (Frullania dilatata), a species which I am more familiar with in its brownish purple form. It is quite common in our area.

I brought a small piece home with me and, to my surprise, discovered a tiny shieldbug nymph nestling among the fronds. It is an overwintering forest bug (Pentatoma rufipes) - one of the few species that overwinters here as a nymph - and quite how it normally gets through the winter has been a subject of some speculation.

Roger Hawkins in his book Shieldbugs of Surrey. (Surrey Wildlife Trust, 2003) says "The Forest Bug is unusual in that it passes the winter as a small nymph, high up on the bark of forest trees." There follows a discussion of the various things these nymphs might feed on and materials such as tree sap, small invertebrates and honeydew are cited. Southwood & Leston in their Land and Water Bugs of the British Isles say "it is not known if the first instar larvae feed. The second instar larvae feed, but the nature of their food is not understood."

It seems to me that, among other things, they might well be sucking the contents of the leafy lobes of some of these tree hugging liverworts, especially as they are well-camouflaged in such situations. The liverwort pads are also not well-placed for insectivorous birds to explore and contain a variety of small invertebrates such as springtails and mites that would vary the bug nymph's diet.

As another twist I learnt that Frullania dilatata and F. tamarisci cause a dermatitis known as 'woodcutter's eczema' and it occurred to me that the bug nymphs, if they are sucking the sap, may be building up some sort of chemical defence against predators.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

This is quite early for them, often they will not be ripe until well into spring. There are many birds that eat the berries though the seeds pass through their gut (seed dispersers). Woodpigeons are also very fond of them but they digest the seeds (seed predators). The fruits are nutritious with a high fat content but they are toxic, though birds normally seem to be able to deal with the toxins. Barbara and David Snow in their splendid book Birds and Berries (T & A D Poyser, Calton, Staffordshire. 1988) say that woodpigeons destroy most of the ivy berry crop.

We also have a bush of arborescent Persian ivy (Hedera colchica) but the seeds on this are still unripe. It makes a non-climbing dome-shaped bush about two metres high that is convenient for watching the various insects that gather on the blossoms in the autumn.

One conundrum regarding ivy berries concerns the holly blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus). Many books say that the larvae feed on these berries among those of other plants. Jeremy Thomas, for example, says in his Butterflies of Britain and Ireland (1991) that "larger ivy berries may also be completely devoured, but the cups remain as evidence." He also says the eggs of the summer generation are laid on ivy buds. The larvae occur in May and June and August and September so they are not normally present when there is any appreciable crop of ivy berries and I wonder if the flower buds are sometimes confused with fruit. Whether buds or berries, holly blue larvae eat the insides rather than the outsides and the 'cups' to which Jeremy Thomas refers must be the outer layer of the buds (or fruit) as they do not have cups like acorns.

Richard South in his classic 1915 The Butterflies of the British Isles quotes extensively from a paper by Adkin describing how the second brood larvae tackle ivy buds, saying in conclusion that they quit the buds in order to pupate.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

It has been very cold over most of the country. Last night the temperature fell in our garden to -2.6 C but in Shropshire -13 C was recorded. The thin layer of snow that remained from yesterday froze hard and produced a lovely crunchy surface on the dead leaves in Churchland Wood. It was like walking over crisps.

Monday, December 11, 2017

Our granddaughter has recently cleared the area outside our kitchen window between the path to the backdoor and the hedge as part of our intermittent attempts to manage it as a mini nature reserve. A couple of days ago we put a small slightly rotten orange pumpkin (sold as a munchkin) in the centre of the area. I bought in October as a small gesture towards Halloween and wanted to watch what would happen to it as it decomposed. Yesterday the female blackbird at the top of the picture put in an appearance and was flicking leaves over in search of food. Among other things she found fallen berries from the nearby rock whitebeam tree (Sorbus rupicola). Her activities started to bury the munchkin (which she did not touch) with a layer of leaves and I reflected that birds must often help objects laying on the surface slowly to get covered up and buried.

Today we had our first snow of the winter accompanied by much hysteria on TV. We caught a snow belt that moved in from northern France (closing the port of Calais) but we were right on the edge and it all melted quite quickly. However, I think it is one of the coldest spell we have had in December for a long time. The photo is a wider shot of the munchkin area much patronised by Mrs. Blackbird and, today, her mate.

Friday, December 08, 2017

I know it is a male because the females are micropterous - almost wingless - and unable to fly. In the past when I arrived home by car in winter I would often see dozens of males fluttering in the headlights along woodland lanes, but they do not seem to have been so common recently.

As a small boy, friends and I used to look for females of this species and mottled umber moths on the bases of tree trunks and in Canada I once saw several males similar to the winter moth fluttering round the base of a tree trunk where there were wingless females.

I used to wonder why some insects had this wingless female dimension. Other examples are the vapourer moth and the autumn flying cranefly Tipula pagana. The best explanation I have come across is by Malcolm Scoble in his book The Lepidoptera and I think it worth quoting at length:

Wing reduction is strongly related to environmental conditions. Those few species where males are affected inhabit coastal habitats or small oceanic islands, areas where wind conditions are such as to prevent individuals flying directionally towards potential mates. Jumping is a typical mode of progression in members of these species. Wing reduction in females is strongly related to the degree of egg maturation at eclosion. Well developed eggs leave little room for the flight muscles, which become reduced. Reduction of flight muscles leads to flightlessness, a first stage in wing reduction, Tympanal organs, which occur mainly at the base of the thorax or of the abdomen, also tend to become reduced or lost. Females emerging from the pupa with well developed eggs have no need to sustain themselves while the eggs mature. As long as males can find them, and provided eclosion occurs on a suitable foodplant, these females can lay their eggs rapidly. Species exhibiting these characteristics are often active in the cold season (e.g. many Geometridae) where rapid oviposition, occurring before extreme conditions overtake individuals, is clearly advantageous.

In other words you can mate and lay all your eggs before you and your partner freeze to death and, since it is winter, you may be less likely to be eaten by a bird.

Wednesday, December 06, 2017

A yellow-line quaker moth (Agrochola macilenta) settled on the outside of our kitchen window yesterday night. It is an autumn-flying species, but rather infrequently recorded as late as December. It is said to be attracted to decaying apples. A. macilenta is a widespread species in England with larvae that feed on a variety of deciduous trees or, in the north, heather (Calluna).

The adult moth is rather sparingly and inconspicuously patterned (macilenta means 'lean' or 'meagre'referring to the markings), they are however distinctive especially the yellow and red almost straight submarginal lines that do not quite make it in good order to the wing tip.

Monday, December 04, 2017

On milder days the flowers on the Oregon grapes in the garden are attractive to late flying bumble bees. The example above is, as far as I can tell, a buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) worker. One feature of this is that it has a very narrow band of buff hairs between the black and white bands at the end of the abdomen. The species is also known to have a third, winter-flying generation whose workers visit oregon grape and other winter flowering shrubs.

This Oregon grape is Mahonia x media 'Charity' which originated in a nursery in Northern Ireland and was selected in a Surrey nursery. We have several different Mahonia species and hybrids in the garden but 'Charity' is among the most attractive. The fruit of Oregon grapes can be used to make jams, jellies and in other recipes. It has both an Award of Merit and a First Class Certificate from the Royal Horticultural Society, so it ticks nearly all the boxes: ornamental evergreen foliage and fragrant flowers in winter; edible fruit; attractive to wildlife.

Saturday, December 02, 2017

One of the most striking plants in late autumn and winter is Italian lords-and-ladies (Arum italicum) whose leaves appear in October or November whereas the commoner lords-and-ladies or cuckoopint (Arum maculatum) do not appear from the ground until late winter, January of February.

In our garden we have two subspecies of A. italicum: subsp. italicum and subsp. neglectum. The latter plant is a native from West Sussex westwards, usually close to the coast, while the nominate subspecies is a garden plant that has escaped into the wild quite widely. It has very distinctive leaves marked with white along the veins (sometimes described with the longer name Arum italicum subsp. italicum 'Marmoratum') whereas the veins in subsp. neglectum are far less of obvious.

The native species does not grow wild in our area so far as I know but A. italicum italicum occurs in a number of woods and hedges locally (some may be hybrids between the two subspecies). Some of these are a long way from the nearest gardens and may be bird sown. The plant depicted below appeared of its own accord on the shady side of a hedge in our garden and is steadily increasing in extent.

The second picture is of native subsp. neglectum and the third of common lords-and-ladies photographed in February in an earlier year. The italicum were photographed earlier today and the leaves have been up for some weeks.

Refreshing my data on lords-and-ladies sent me to the bookshelf for Cecil Prime's wonderful monograph, largely on the British Arum species. It covers not only the biology, ecology and distribution of the plants but includes fascinating information on its economic uses, folklore and vernacular etymology. A masterly study -do get a copy: Prime, C. T. (1960 and 1981) Lords and Ladies. Collins New Naturalist series.

Friday, December 01, 2017

I noticed, in Churchland Wood, that the hazels coppiced back in March this year still retain a full complement of green leaves whereas the larger hazels have lost theirs as have the coppiced sweet chestnuts and hornbeams. Maybe it is because they got off to a late start.

In addition to the hazel green, there are variations on the same colour provided by woodsage and foxgloves making attractive fresh-looking patches throughout the coppice.

Another variation in colour is provided by gold and green field maple leaves. Maples seem to do well in this area and this one is a seedling growing through the fence bordering the garden of Poplars Cottage.

As it was the beginning of December I cast about for any late stragglers among flowering plants but only managed to find a prickly sow-thistle (Sonchus asper) seemingly little damaged by recent frosts.

Friday, November 10, 2017

30 November 2017. One of the highlights of the month was the discovery, the other day by our granddaughter when she was cutting the hedge here of the abandoned summer nest of a dormouse. Summer nests are larger and looser than those used for hibernation and normally placed higher from the ground. The hedge in question is only a couple of metres from our kitchen window and grows near a busy path and car parking area, so the dormice must be tolerant of a fair amount of disturbance, though we have known them in our garden and the general area for many years.

The nest was beautifully and characteristically constructed of dead leaves and honeysuckle bark, but was unusual inasmuch as most of the leaves were from the wild service tree that grows nearby and the bark was stripped from Wilson's honeysuckle (Lonicera nitida) which is major element in the hedge at this point (see November 13 below). Interesting to reflect that this alien shrub which is so widespread as a hedging plant in gardens maybe helping to conserve dormice, a legally protected species on the edge of its range in Britain.

29 November 2017. In Churchland Wood everything seems brown and grey in the bitter north wind which rattles dead leaves across the ground. One spot of brightness is a couple of clumps of sulphur tuft fungi (Hypholoma fasciculare) a common poisonous species growing here at the base of an overstood sweet chestnut.

On the top and side of the root plate at the end of our garden I found some common smoothcap moss (Atrichum undulatum) also a common woodland species. Also known as Catherine's moss, it was once in the genus Catharinea, a name apparently given in honour of Catherine the Great of Russia (but note the slightly different spelling). Such a generic name may have been coined with an eye to smoothing the way to a research grant.

23 November 2017. Killingan Wood is very quiet just now apart from the rustle of the deep layer of leaves as I walk through. In one place there has been, for as long as I can remember, a hump in the path, maybe an old heap of earth that has settled to a smooth swell like the back of a whale.

Various mosses grow around the edges but most of the surface is covered with a thin green patina which looks like an almost featureless slime under the microscope. Maybe an alga, or the protonema, the earliest stage in the life cycle, of a moss or liverwort, but curious that it never seems to to develop in any way.

Now that most of the leaves are down the evergreens are more obvious. In Killingan we have ivy, holly, yew, one plant of spurge laurel (Daphne laureola) and, rather less welcome, an increasing number of cherry laurel bushes (below) sown from neighbouring gardens. I sometimes think the wood will eventually be a species-poor mix of sycamore (another alien) with a cherry laurel understory.

16 November 2017. New mushrooms continue to appear on the piles of wood chipping in Churchland Wood. Today I found two species I have not seen before. The first is, I think, a developing hare's-foot inkcap (Coprinopsis lagopus) and I am still working on the second (maybe a Psathyrella).

The woods are at their autumn best just now and most of the fungi are on the wood chip piles, here situated to the right of the foreground coppiced chestnut.

15 November 2017. Along Jessmond Path I discovered two toadstools. They must have been there for some time and I wondered why I had not noticed them before. How much there must be that does not impinge on our consciousness. One technique I use sometimes is to walk, say, 20 paces and then stop and have a really good look round. Or to sit motionless in one place for as long as possible. The longer one stays, the more will be seen.

Anyway, the toadstools in question are, I think, bluefoot boletes (Boletus cisalpinus), so named because if cut through the base of the stalk the flesh turns blueish. They agree in every respect with the descriptions I have read, but one really needs to check the spores to be certain. In the past they would have been identified as red-cracking boletes (Boletus chrysenteron) but this group has now been split into several species. To add further to the confusion, both species have wandered in and out of the genera Boletus, Xerocomus and Xerocomellus.

The bits scattered round the bolete are the remains of sweet chestnuts eaten by squirrels or birds.

Despite the vernacular names, some authors say the bluefoot bolete has cracks on the skin of the cap (as below) whereas the red-cracking, rather paradoxically, does not. Those who want the full story might visit this web site. You have been warned!

The story of this bolete continued the next day when, having tried to take a spore print, I discovered several small moth larvae under the cap. I wondered if they might be the agaric clothes mothMorophaga choragella which used to be called Tinea or Scardia boleti (promising names), but the larvae are clearly not of this species although A. Maitland Emmet says Boletus is 'a larval pabulum'. Fungus-feeding micro moth larvae are usually found on bracket fungi, so I have put the bolete cap into a breeding chamber to see if I can hatch any moths out. As the picture below shows, many of the tiny caterpillars decided to leave the toadstool as soon as it was in the box.

14 November 2017. The laurustinus (Viburnum tinus) that seeded itself into our front hedge is flowering well this year and has both flowers and fruit from last year's flowers at the same time. It is a Mediterranean shrub but seems to be doing well here, perhaps helped by climate change. The berries are just about visible below and to the left of centre.

13 November 2017. Our granddaughter was cutting the hedge today when she noticed a berry with a smaller one beside it. It is the fruit of Wilson's honeysuckle,Lonicera nitida, a popular hedging shrub originally from China that often escapes into the wild here. Our plants quite often have flowers, but we have not seen fruit before.

11 November 2017. Along Columbine Path at the edge of Killingan Wood (TQ783192) I was looking for more galls on beech leaves and noticed some small tufts where branch veins joined the midrib on the underside of one leaf. On the other side was a small bump, paler than the rest of the leaf. These would appear to be the work of another gall mite, Monochetus sulcatus which I am sure will be quite widespread despite my being able to find any records.

Another pleasure was seeing a grey squirrel scrambling up a tree trunk at Ariel Cottage maybe 50 metres from our house. It is a long time since I saw one of these and they are, maybe, returning now my granddaughter has left with her cats. I am somewhat of a heretic in liking grey squirrels.

10 November 2017. Coming up through Churchland Wood today I found these old galls on a fallen beech leaf.

They are caused, initially on green leaves before they have fallen, by the gall mite Eriophyes nervisequus and consist of small pits between the veins on the underside of the leaf known as 'erinea' and containing a felty down in which the mites live. This gall has also been called Aceria fagineus.

9 November 2017. Today my granddaughter cleared away the medlar tree that had been blocking the way the my Square Metre Project (an incense cedar had fallen across it and squashed down some of the branches). I report on this project in another blog: http://squaremetre1.blogspot.co.uk

2 November 2017. There are two pastures near our home, one is currently grazed by cattle and the other by sheep. All the droppings in the sheep field are attracting half a dozen of more yellow dung flies (see below) while those in the cow pasture seem completely bereft of insect life. It is difficult to understand why this should be the case, but I will seek for explanations.

1 November 2017. Autumn is beginning to reach its best. Here is a view across Killingan Wood Brick Pit.

On the woodland bank on the other side of Churchland Lane I found a flourishing colony of fuchsia (Fuchsia magellanica) on a south facing bank in ancient Churchland Wood. This native of Argentina and Chile is widespread as a garden escape in northern Britain and Ireland but seems rather less common in South East England.

Another garden escape from that part of the world is Argentinian vervain, Verbena bonariensis, which, to my surprise, I found growing happily in a chestnut coppice in the same wood a couple of weeks ago. One wonders if the success of these exotics has anything to do with climate change.

Monday, October 30, 2017

I found this army of small toadstools on the outskirts of Sedlescombe village today.

After suggestions from Clare Blencowe and Martin Allison of the Sussex Fungus Group it looked as though they are fairy inkcaps. Coprinellus disseminatus (there is a lookalike in Psathyrella pygmaea but the Coprinellus has minute erect hairs on the cap) so I walked back to the site and checked with both hand lens there and microscope later at home. The hairs are present so it seems C disseminatus is the correct species.

Fairy inkcaps are pale buff or white when young as in the picture below, which was taken a short distance further up the path. Also they do not, like many other inkcaps, dissolve into black liquid as they age.

And here is a close up (though the hairs are scarcely visible).

Walking to the site I passed someone's front lawn with many blackening waxcaps (Hygrocybe conica) and a neat little ring of orange waxcaps (TQ783184). Via a quick trespass I retrieved one of these (see below) but have found it impossible to name. Waxcaps come in a variety of colours including yellow, orange and red and are quite variable. I would call mine orange. It has a dry cap and stipe and white edges to the decurrent gills. The black is made by spores of other fungi. Using the Quick Waxcap Key this suggests Hygrocybe pratensis, H. turunda or H. cantharellus. It isn't pratensis and I am not convinced by the possibility of turunda or cantharellus so it will be left unidentified.

On the southern side of Brede lane as I headed home(TQ784181) I found several of these 'little brown jobs' of the toadstool world growing on the grass verge. My books have dozens of species that look like this, so I am not even having a guess at its identity.

On the banks of the Gorselands Estate I found several waxcaps like the one below. I suspect that they are meadow waxcaps (Cuphophyllus pratensis) that have had close encouters with a strimmer, but there are other possibilities.

Not far from these on a mossy lawn edge there were some tiny toadstools that, so far as I am concerned, could be anything. Again the books have lots of pictures of these tiddley things, but much more is needed than pictures to make any progress I think.

My next encounter was at the corner of a field (TQ784185) where I was obliged to get out of the way of a rather savage-looking dog. It looks like an ink cap, as it is starting to deliquesce, possibly Parasola plicatilis.

Carrying on with my impromptu foray I found this clustered species on one of the piles of woodchip left by the men clearing the transmission lines in the spring. I ought, I feel, be able to identify them but, with so many unidentifiables already my brain was beginning to hurt.

Talking about brains, my last find was of a lonely coral fungus in Churchland Wood (TQ783188). I managed to find a Fennoscandinavian key to this group, but clear determination was dependent on what the spores were like and I am not quite sure where to find the spores on fungi like these. And even if I could I am not certain I would be confident of an unequivocal determination. It does rather make me wonder how many fungi have been misidentified by people leafing through books of coloured pictures that normally contain only a selection of British, European or American mycoflora and no details of spores or other important structures.

Anyway, If anyone can suggest identities for any of the above, I would be grateful to hear from them.